Thomas Lowe Taylor -- UNKNOWN FRAGMENT

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…reprieved into their own assumptions, calling judgment a lesser crime than the one committed; how you were stalled against the other terms for doubt is still a mystery, and the proper sentences were allowed to take their place with their constructions made clear in the afterglow of communication. Would as hat, but starve. This might go further; but then again, it might not.

The day’s own release has its own terminology to defend. You are not spoke but wheel and palm, motived into some of these absurd postures by your own insistence, told by the clarity of thought which precedes action that the time is still its own realm of forgiveness, and no pity for the years will erase them, make them come again, like the story of the great man who takes you off the bait-hook only seconds before the ivory fangs rip and tear in a second of darkness descending, no it is just a little too late for that. Not that the fang has torn, but the hook is rusty, and the great man is still asleep in the memory of how own cells deteriorating, cheese and crackers again for dinner, and no mousse in the trap, rack of horns and all.

I said wait, but the bong was too long afar to send around again. This was the other moon you waxed a glow of light inside your bedclothes. Archaic words do not nostalgia make, but smooth signs of light between your sighs, a spot and center would call recall the name of the day, and let you too soon be the one you said you were, and slope the children up the hill, marking them one by one as good and borne aloft.

And this was the day you said again, this is the moment to decide. The colors of the light were not so angular or indistinct, but associated into a realm of potentiality, soft against your side the wanting ceased altogether, and left you numb against the tides of your own heart beating, it was a rough edge to hang onto the edge and scream aloud, no more machinery, no more penetrations to the secret center of light, and no more angular distances to calculate against your own calm demeanor is not such a light answer as made again, held on the side of doubt; this was the hitching post of time, the remote sensor of your own nerve endings, the patch of sticky tape under the table with your name on it. This was the photograph.

What else would say besides, turn the hot dogs now. Would there be enough sand? The air was really too thick to dispense with, but little by little, another song was intermittently preoccupied, left too soon along the shore with wicket and scoop, the other one plucking puffins for dinner, the other one with a raccoon with his nostrils filled with cement, and me picking up the dead kitten from the street, sliding it into the paper bag, and trying to hide it in the empty garbage can by the garage, its dead eyes peering up at me when I emptied the ashes from the hibachi in there, too, thinking, ashes to ashes, kitty, this is your service today was not just another day.

The photographs were sent around like poems in an envelope. I let you think it was day when it really was twilight in the late years of the last decade of the second millennium, checked for accuracy and let stand; it is not too soon to clarify this writing as being about something or not, but it is too late to make a decision about it. And in the small ceremonials of the blood, of the heart, there is no pity or remonstrance.

I took a shower from the heat and washed my hands again and again. I was hungry but didn’t mention it. Cigarettes. What is the way of blue clouds smoothing into her hair again, and would I recognize you on the street if you said “I love you” and then ran away. It is still a long way from here to there, and no bus tokens in my pocket, only the checkbook and the empty ring of keys. The stiller forms do cloud your heart again, becoming motive in the air’s terms for light that you are here again, and left beside doubt…